OPPO Band Style review: a compelling fitness tracker that doesn’t break the bank

OPPO forayed into the smartwatch category in India a few months ago with the OPPO Watch, which is among the more desirable WearOS-based devices in the market. That being said, the fitness band segment in the country is seeing a meteoric rise, and to that note, the brand recently unveiled the OPPO Band Style which retails at a wallet-friendly price point of Rs 2,999, and features a slurry of features including SpO2 monitoring, real-time heart rate tracking as well as sleep analysis. That said, there’s no shortage of compelling fitness trackers in the country, so in this review, let’s see if the OPPO Band Style is suited for your wrists. 

Features

• Weighs approximately 10.3g (without straps)
• 1.1-inch, 124 x 294 pixels, AMOLED display with 2.5D curved glass
• 5ATM water resistance 
• 100mAh battery 
• 13 workout modes including outdoor running, cycling, swimming, etc
• Continuous SpO2 monitoring, real-time HR monitoring, sleep analysis, sedentary reminders
• Message and incoming call notification support 

The Lowdown

• Staying true to its moniker, the OPPO Band Style is among the nicer-looking fitness trackers in the market, and the wearable ships with two straps in the box. While you can outfit the same with a conventional rubber strap, the company has also bundled a metal buckle band that elevates the looks of the unit tenfold. In a nutshell, the OPPO Band Style looks classy and can be dressed both, up and down, depending on the occasion. 

• Both the bundled straps offer a comfortable, itch-free grip around the wrist and the fitness tracking module can be easily unhooked from either of the two bands too. I should also point out that the OPPO Band Style weighs in at just over 10.3g and correspondingly, will not weigh your wrists down when you’re working out. Moreover, the wearable is quite comfortable to wear to bed too as it won’t poke your wrists when they’re pressing against the bed. 
• I also quite like the display on the OPPO Band Style. The wearable ships with a 1.1-inch AMOLED screen which offers ample contrast and gets satisfactorily bright too. The touch responsiveness of the panel is excellent as well and despite its minuscule size, I never faced any issues using gestures to navigate through the band’s UI. 

• Speaking of which, the OPPO Band Style features a user-friendly UI that doesn’t warrant a steep learning curve. Buyers opting for the band can swipe left or right to switch between the different watch faces whereas swiping up or down will bring up the list of pre-installed apps. Of course, the band will connect to your smartphone by means of the HeyMelody Health companion app and from there, you can variate the order of the pre-installed apps as well.

• Since we’re on the subject of the HeyMelody Health app, you should know that the app lets you finetune various other aspects of the OPPO Band Style too, including updating the wearable’s firmware, setting alarms, turning ‘lift to wake the screen’ on or off, tweaking the duration of sedentary reminders as well as the intervals for SpO2 monitoring, and downloading and applying new watch faces. At any given moment, you can have up to five watch faces installed on the OPPO Band Style and the wearable also lets you select a photo from your gallery and use it as a watch face. 

• The OPPO Band Style also ships with a bunch of other niceties including a built-in media player to control your music playback, a remote shutter for your phone’s camera app as well as a ‘find my phone’ utility. I tested all of the aforementioned features and they worked as advertised, so no complaints here. 

• The fitness tracker can push notifications to your wrist from a bunch of different apps as well. You can handpick which apps you want to receive notifications from and the wearable does a good job of segregating the incoming alerts under different app icons too. Lest I forget, you can use the wearable to answer or end a phone call too. 

• Unfortunately, the OPPO Band Style doesn’t let you revert to notifications. Consequently, if you were on the lookout for a wearable with programmable quick replies, the Mi Band 5 is still your best bet. 

• Coming to the meat of the matter, the OPPO Band Style tracks steps accurately and during my stint with the wearable, I noticed that the unit negated ghost steps well too. The HR tracking was to my satisfaction as well, though the readings from the SpO2 monitor were a tad higher than what I got from a pulse oximeter. For instance, on one occasion, the wearable outputted a reading of 99 percent whereas the pulse oximeter recorded the same at 96 percent. 

• Sleep tracking on the OPPO Band Style, however, wasn’t the best. For one, the wearable doesn’t track REM sleep and I also noticed that the unit struggled to get a number on the exact time I went to bed. 

• As for the battery life, the OPPO Band Style’s 100mAh cell drained by almost 50 percent in the five days I spent testing it. Consequently, you should be able to get around 10 days of backup off a single charge and that’s with continuous heart rate monitoring and SpO2 monitoring enabled. 

Final Verdict

The OPPO Band Style retails for Rs 2,799 in India and for the price, gets the basics right. To that note, the wearable offers accurate step tracking, a comfortable and stylish design, two sets of straps as well as a slew of other fitness tracking features that work as advertised. That being said, the tracker faces stiff competition from the Mi Band 5 (review) which doesn’t just retail for less, but it also offers better sleep tracking metrics, more watch faces as well as an option to revert to notifications. However, the OPPO Band Style does have an ace up its sleeve, that being SpO2 monitoring, which, in the current scenario, is a must-have feature. Consequently, buyers in the market for a stylish fitness tracker with SpO2 monitoring will feel right at home with the OPPO Band Style. 

Editor’s rating: 4 / 5 

Pros:

• Stylish design 
• Accurate step tracking metrics
• SpO2 monitoring 
• Comes with two sets of straps

Cons:

• Sleep tracking isn’t the best
• Lacks support for quick replies